Combining media platforms creates opportunities to be more effective

“Having more than one media to juggle gives us a lot of possibilities . . .but also a lot of new problems to solve.”

“If we look at the media investment, they have gone up the last five years 10 to 15 percent.”

“We are spending more money in promoting more products, and we promote them in more media channels.”

“If you use different types of media and combine them, you will be immensely more effective than just one media type.”

“Multimedia campaigns always trump single media campaigns.”

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About Staffan Hultan

Staffan Hultan is one of the two founders of RAM. After graduating from the universities in both Uppsala and Manchester, Staffan Hultan joined the market research community in1988. He has worked over 15 years with Synnovate, Research International and AC Nielsen. He has also worked as a techer in statistics and analysis. Hultan is a generalist within the market research field, but has been specialising on media and communication research.

Staffan Hultan has together with Ola Friskopp developed RAM from an idea to an international company the last 12 years. His work covers both product and market development of RAM in 18 countries. He is currently VP and head of RAM Business Support.

Staffan Hultan, co-founder of Research and Analysis of Media (RAM), spoke to the audience about the complexities of combining multiple types of media.

“Having more than one media to juggle gives us a lot of possibilities, but also a lot of new problems to solve,” Hultan said.

Although he noted mistakes can be made by combining media in the wrong way, Hultan said marketing investments have gone up 10% to 15% in last few years: “We are spending more money in promoting more products.”

Hultan showed the audience a chart with different leaves to see which people would be able to identify the different types, followed by a chart containing numerous logos to show how quickly we recognise and associate with them.

“How is it that we know everything from this (logo chart), and nothing from this (leaves chart)?” Hultan asked.

Hultan said that we as a people have a high familiarity with brands.

“Any given day, we probably pass about 3,000 to 4,000 commercial messages,” he said, explaining that our brain uses a filtering system to process these messages, remembering what is relevant while everything else is filtered away.

Hultan explained the way a toddler learns a word, using around 80 to 100 repetitions for the word to be grasped by the brain. However, if the word is used throughout the house in different, relatable situations, that number of repetitions to learn the word changes, he said: “It takes exactly half the repetitions.”

Hultan then related this to media, saying this is exactly how media works as well: “If you use different types of media and combine them, you will be immensely more effective than if you use one type of media.”

About Western iMedia

Western iMedia, a team of fusion journalists, is a multi-platform editorial start-up operated out of Western Kentucky University.